Looking For Help With Dock Launching

Hey Everyone, I like having an Applications folder in the doc to pop the grid of icons to pick from. But I have so many apps now it is a huge mess. I tried to put apps in folders (like "creative", "productivity", "video", etc) but that made the apps freak out.

Is there an app launcher that would do the same grid of icons pop up, but let me pick what is visible? Any help is much appreciated...

Are you aware that once you have the grid of icons up, you can start typing the name of the app you're interested in and Finder will take you right to that app?

If I'm not mistaken, this only works for the first letter you type. So if you have two or more apps which start with the first letter you've typed, it goes to the first one, alphabetically. Or is there another way that I don't know about ?

Doug

Edit: When doing it the way you suggested but in list view, you can type the exact name and it will take you to the app. But the OP seems to want to do away with the mess all together, rather than just have to take an extra step and type to get to an app. I can totally understand where he's coming from with that (though sorting through the app folder in grid mode is fine w/me) because I'm anal retentive too.

To the OP: There should be a way to put individual apps in a separate folder and dock it without the apps "freaking out".

In fact, it works for me just fine. I made a new folder within the apps folder and named it "media". I put iTunes and VLC in it and then I moved the Apps folder out of my dock, and replaced it with the new media folder. I'm currently listening to music after having launched iTunes from that new folder.

Make a folder (or several) of aliases to the apps you want. Put that in the Dock.

That's cool. I guess that's just another way of saying copy/paste without the actual file being shifted anywhere, so there's no extra space taken up. It's a breadcrumb, more or less... correct ? Nice. Learn something new every day.

Although many apps will let you move them around within the Applications folder, I prefer using aliases for organization. If you choose to move programs, don't put the Apple apps (iTunes, iPhoto, etc) in a different folder. Software Update won't "see" them as even being present to update.